Message from Principal

August 2014

I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to once again be part of Brooks Secondary School. For those of you who do not know I was a vice-principal at Brooks for two years (2005-2007) before making the move to elementary school. I spent the last 7 years as an elementary principal at Henderson, Grief Point and Westview. I absolutely loved it. It has been very rewarding working with staff, parents and of course the students. When the opportunity to apply for the Brooks principalship came up it was a 'no-brainer' for me. The chance to once again be part of a school with such a wonderful reputation and the opportunity to work with our students, their families and a large, dynamic staff in this community was way too good to pass up. I feel very fortunate to be in this position! I am looking forward to working with everyone, getting to know you all better and finding ways to create good, solid learning opportunities for all of our students.

I was hoping to send this initial message out under better circumstances but at this point, a settlement in the ongoing labour dispute has not been reached. Like everyone, I am hopeful that a fair and equitable resolution will be negotiated soon. The purpose of this message is to provide some general information and an update on where we are at. As you all know, we abruptly finished the last school year in June with a multitude of complexities and emotions due to the contract negotiations between the BCTF and the Government. Although we are optimistic that a negotiated settlement will be reached between the two parties soon, the timing of this may impact our school opening schedule and activities

Due to the labour dispute, plans for school start up may potentially need to be altered. We plan on providing student schedules on the first day of school once we are back in session. The procedure for making counselling appointments, along with the opening day schedule and other very important information about the upcoming school year will be updated and posted on our school website as need be.

This year for your convenience and ours we plan on making better use of our school website. The website can be found at: www.sd47.bc.ca/school/brooks/ It is currently being worked on and tweaked but it is operational. Future newsletters and information will be posted to the school website. There is also an option at the bottom of the homepage of our website where individuals can sign up with an email address to receive some school information directly. We will have a limited number of printed copies of newsletters available at the office. Our school calendar will be kept up to date on the site as well. Please get into the habit of looking at the website for any information you may need. We will also be making use of our Twitter account to get information out to our wider community. For those of you that use Twitter we can be found at: @sd47_brooks

As September draws near I encourage you to stay up to date on the latest contract negotiations. You can check in often with our school district website at www.sd47.bc.ca/ and follow the links under "Teacher Job Action and Lockout" for up to date information. If there are any changes to our school opening we will post information on the school website to communicate these changes.

Finally, I encourage all of our students to take advantage of the incredible learning opportunities that are available to you at Brooks Secondary. I also encourage parents and guardians to be actively involved in your child's school experiences at Brooks. We believe that one of the most important factors in our students' successes is effective communication between school and home. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve communication, we would love to hear your ideas. If at any point you have questions about any aspect of the school or our programs please do not hesitate to contact the school.

I am optimistic and hopeful that we will back soon and start up the 2014-2015 school year. We are once again looking forward to working with our students, their families and our community as a whole.

Sincerely,

Jamie Burt

Principal

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